Sermons

Secret sins are the deadliest and costliest. 

Right upfront, I will be efficient with my words.

• Not because “lust” is unimportant.
• Not because “lust” does not affect everyone, because it does.
• Not because “lust” is unpowerful, because it is.
• Not because “lust” does not ruin lives, because left alone, it will.

In the same spirit of Jesus’ teaching on “lust”, I won’t shoot straight to the point. 

• This paragraph needs hit with a full impact so as not to miss the forest for the trees.
• Otherwise, there is a risk of draining its power.

In four verses, Jesus makes “lustful intent” synonymous with committing adultery. 

• Looking at a woman “with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28).

 

• In the next two verses Jesus answers the number one question everyone should ask:

 

“If lusting after someone means you are committing the sin of adultery, then what will it take to stop?” 

 

• Jesus’ answer is the same in verse 29 and verse 30.

 

• This answer, in fact, is the biggest brake pedal that Jesus could possibly use to get someone to stop lusting.

 

• Jesus basically says, when you are about to lust you face the choice:

 

• Either stopping yourself.
• Or, facing the prospect of one day, “having your whole body thrown into hell” (v. 29).

Verse 30 repeats this horrible reality: you either stop lusting pictured as:

“cutting your right hand off” and “throwing it away” or: “your whole body” goes “into hell” (v. 30). 

• I am going to unpack this passage in detail but in summary: Jesus’ remedy for lust is boiled down to one thing. Hell. 
• Either slam the brakes or one day be flung into hell.

 

• There is no question, lustful appetites are powerful. Everything in our world markets is laced and laden with evocative allurements ensnaring consumers. 

 

People live zombified; yielding themselves to a life of grazing on their next unholy morsal. 

• This lust culture we are immersed in makes odd to call this wrong.

“Our world is now irreformable, so why even talk about it?” 

 

One reason to talk about where the world is going and is the reality of hell. 

 

No matter how accepted, normal, and involuntary lusting is day-to-day:  Jesus calls us to remember doing it, violates him, and this holy God will punish you for it accordingly. 

• If you are unwilling to repent of it, your “whole body” will “be thrown into hell” (v. 29).

 

One thing is clear from this discussion; most people fit the category of being unwilling to hit the brakes on lust. 

• Most people these days are cavalier about “lust.”
  • Gone are the days when admitting to “lust” as taboo or undignified.
  • Husbands and wives openly admit to “lusting” for favorite actors/actresses or co-workers.
  • Culture of the “open marriage.”

 

• They may follow their admission by saying, “Oh I would never act on my lust…”
  • What happens inside is categorically different.
  • Not what I would do.

 

Jesus’ sermon on the mount, he targets the heart – with eternity in view.  Raising the stakes immeasurably. 

• Let me summarize my point in a way that at first glance sounds offensive but gets at what Jesus is doing here in Matthew 5:27-30.

 

• If someone is married and commits adultery and experiences all of the immense fallout from committing sin.

 

• But, this person then repents, this person is immeasurably better off than someone harboring secret lust without never acting on it. in physical adultery.

 

• Though not crossing a physical line, if this person never repents of these secret sins, then he or she will be condemned and separated from God and everyone in heaven, cast into hell forever.

Practically speaking, someone who commits adultery who loses their spouse and even access to his or her children who then genuinely seeks and receives forgiveness through the grace of Christ is immeasurably better off than someone who commits adultery in the secret of his or her heart and never genuinely seeks and receives forgiveness through the grace of Christ. 

 

The person who never repents of sin inside his heart is not truly born again; still under God’s eternal penalty – cast into hell forever. 

 

We overcomplicate things to our own detriment. 

• Hell is real. Hell is forever.  Hell means torture for the whole body forever and most people are going there. 

 

• Most will ignore this reality and this warning altogether though they should not.

 

The only way to truly kill a sin this powerful is to apply a brake pedal that is equally strong. 

• The brake pedal is the warning of hell.

When a child touches a hot stove, the child knows not to do it again.  Touching the stove, you are now informed that if you were to press your hand down on a hot burner and keep it there, your hand would feel excruciating pain. 

If forced to keep your hand there, it would melt from the heat, causing a dire consequence, perhaps killing you. 

This information from pain encodes this into a child’s mind just by simply touching the stove. 

 

• These verses are Jesus’ hot stove.

 

• Touching hell’s flame is meant to warn us to never end up there.

 

Now, with the Big Idea “forest” in our faces, let us investigate the “trees” and soak in some of the nutrition. 

 

“How we are supposed to apply the doctrine of hell when we know Jesus’ promises Christians are not going there?” 

• We are saved from hell.  
• We need to make this application still

 

Reset our minds that Jesus has absolute authority. 

• This text is about Jesus’ Lordship
• Jesus is Lord over your life and over your eternity.

 

Jesus’ Lordship is the message we must hear in this text. 

 Prop: Submission to Jesus’ authority over two dramatic areas

 1. He is Lord over our imagination (vv. 27-28)

 

Jesus has this authority whether you recognize it or not. 

• Joy comes from maintaining a “glad submission” [Piper].
• Jesus has the authority to convict you.

Verse 27 like six applications/illustrations apply the Law from the heart. 

“You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery” (v. 27). 

“But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (v. 28).   

Jesus is not “abolishing” the Law but revealing its depth of meaning (cf. v. 17). 

• Not: more and more but going deeper and deeper.
  • Jesus targets the heart.

Verse 19, Jesus breaks the façade of  “relaxing the Law” – lies making external obedience look harder when it is not. 

• God’s standard is not moralism.

 

• Practically speaking, relaxing the Law leaves the adulterer hopeless – believing they must save themselves instead of reaching for grace.

 

• Or the “non-adulterer” with a false sense of security for not having gone there – externally.

 

Jesus equates adultery with “lustful intent” tying together commands 7 and 10 from Moses’ decalogue. 

• As a Pharisee, Paul felt self-justified until measured against, “You shall not covet.”

^ESV  Romans 7:7-10 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”⁸ But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.⁹ I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.¹⁰ The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.

 

Deepening the Law to our hearts means, if you have ever burned for someone other than your spouse, you are guilty of breaking God’s standard. 

 

Lustful intent [epithumia – desire] means sinning against God and if married, your spouse. 

• Jesus is not speaking in terms of natural attraction.
• Jesus is not speaking solely in terms of deep-seated perversion.
• This is not isolated to men but also applies to women.
• This applies to married and single people.
• To younger and older people.

Some say, “Men are more prone toward visual stimulation.” 

• Jesus speaks of the “eye” or “eye-gate,” – As a woman, “I do not need to listen.”
  • Verse 28 does create the scenario of a man lusting after a woman, but it broadens.

 

• Words like “everyone” [pas] and “heart” [kardia] (v. 28) open the application.

 

• This scenario applies in reverse to a woman’s lustful imaginations for spoken security or affirmation through the ear-gate from another man or woman.
  • There is also the bold woman from Proverbs 6 and 7.
  • Romans 1 “exchanging of natural desires” (cf. Rom. 1:26).

 

• Focus is on the heart.

 

• A turf war is inside the minds of men and women.

 

• What you allow your heart to feed on and latch on to.

 

Not aiming to solve culture but recognize what was a trend toward the androgynous is now being normalized. 

 

What is convicting is from the single word “already” (v. 28). 

• It has happened; Jesus has caught you.
  • He has vetted your cell phone.
  • Read your texts and knows what you meant.

 

• The Spirit holds us the Law as a mirror reflecting the sun’s blinding glare against the heart’s sinfulness.

 

For the Jew, Old Testament Law meant death by execution for someone who has committed adultery. 

• Both man and woman.

^ESV  Leviticus 20:10 “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. 

^ESV  Deuteronomy 22:22 “If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel. 

^ESV  Leviticus 20:13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. 

^ESV  Proverbs 6:32 He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself.

 

 

• The Law’s punishment extends to a way more severe consequence.
  • An eternal consequence.
  • Far worse than temporal, physical death, this is eternal, physical death.  

^ESV  1 Corinthians 6:9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality

 

^ESV  Revelation 21:8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

 

 

This is foreboding and harrowing, disturbing, and upsetting. 

 

• Still, see grace in these verses as sexual sin is listed alongside many other sins – all requiring repentance.
• What can be to be repented of?

 

You can be forgiven and still go to heaven as a truly repentant believer if you will truly repent. 

 

The point verses 29-30 make, is that God is the only One who truly knows the condition of your heart. 

 

God’s Word says we are never the final judge over the condition of our heart. 

 

• Your conscience is not the final court over your condition; God is, Jesus is.
  • People quip, “I know I’m saved!”
  • Appointing themselves as their own Supreme Court over what will be their reality on the last day.

 

• The fact of the matter is, we lie to ourselves (cff. Jer. 17:9; 1 John 1:8,10).

 

^ESV  1 John 1:8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

 

^ESV  1 John 1:10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

 

 

This brings me to our next point. 

 

2. He is Lord over our eternity (vv. 29-30)

 

Jesus has absolute determination over where you will spend eternity.

 

The reality of hell is meant to sober believers and unbelievers because Jesus has the ultimate say over who ends up there. 

 

• Hell is Jesus’ brake pedal; essential to jam to a full stop, “lustful intent.”

 

• Hell also functions as Jesus’ gas pedal to accelerate you into immediate action!

 

The key for change is acknowledging and yielding to Jesus’ Lordship over your eternity.

• Jesus, not you!

 

• Tying together point one with point two paints the sobering vision of Jesus’ throne from the vantage of Heaven.

 

• From where Jesus rules.

 

• He sees right through you and adjudicates his rule from heaven’s throne.

^ESV  Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.²² On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’²³ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

^ESV  John 5:24-29 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.²⁵ “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.²⁶ For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.²⁷ And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.

²⁸ Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice²⁹ and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. 

 

^ESV  Revelation 20:11-12 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. ¹² And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.

• Like Judas Iscariot, many will be deceived finding themselves plunged into an eternal fiery abyss.
  • Hell is dark, painful, embittering, incomprehensible.

 

• Where the worm does not die (cf. Mark 9:48).

 

• Meaning your eternal and physical new body is never consumed in this death.

 

• Hell, what Jesus references more than any other topic.

 

• Hell puts everything into perspective.

 

 Hell is meant to elicit two responses. 

• Hell’s fear
  • Finding out you have lied to yourself.
  • You never truly knew Jesus.

 

 

• Hell’s consequences
  • The despair that you lost forever.
  • Gratitude knowing what Jesus saved you from.

 

Hell represents Jesus’ absolute authority over what you choose in your heart and mind and what this means in view of your future forever. 

 

One response for those on their way to heaven (vv. 29-30). 

• Radical amputation is simple repentance [Piper].
  • “Gauging your eye out” or “Cutting your hand off” both sound severe!
  • Yes, but repentance is severe.

“Gauging” and “cutting” are metaphorical measures.

But to stop lustful heart adultery in light of the consequence of being cast into hell calls for this level of intensity! 

• For believers, sin’s vice grip of sin has been broken (cf. 6:14).
  • Sin no longer has dominance in your life.
  • Submission to Jesus’ Lordship says, “I will do whatever it takes to stop!”

 

Origin the early church father from Alexandria (AD 195-254) took Jesus’ words literally castrating himself so as not to be tempted (Outlawed 75 years later by council of Nicaea). 

• He missed point one from verses 27-28.
• Why good bible study is so important.
  • This sin is first and foremost in your heart.
  • Inside someone’s internal screen or imagination.

 

Someone’s physical eye may be involved, or someone’s right arm might reach out and act in sin.

• You can be both blind and handicapped and still commit self-destructive heart adultery.    

 

Hell proves Jesus’ Lordship is irrefutable.

• It drives us to admit we are powerless for self-reform, by our own strength.
• We cannot make ourselves holy.
• This drives us toward true spiritual repentance.

The heart of someone truly repentant says, “Lord I am willing to do whatever you require of me!” 

The “right eye” is usually the stronger eye; making it more valuable. 

 

The eye is fascinating in its ability to focus, perceive, and inform. 

• The gateway to knowledge and pleasure.

 

• An ophthalmological engineer told me the eye is made of material as strong as concrete.
  • The white part is the same material as the iris.
  • The reason it changes color has to do with involuntary physiological decisions based in how it is functioning.

 

• In view of Christ’s Lordship over your life; “This organ, though priceless, is expendable.”

This reaches back to the Old Testament: Law of Lex Talionis, “an eye for an eye.” 

• The Law of Christ applies this same consequence!

 

• Sinning with mind’s eye means gauging out your mind’s-eye!

 

To grasp how powerful imagination is, you just have to look at how technology has developed over the last 50 years.  What we science fiction has now become reality.  We talk to each other on-demand on screens from virtually everywhere.  People are building rockets that land like they took off and will transport our grandkids to Mars.  The power of our imaginations proves the power of our sinful imaginations and how this power must be met with the force of powerful repentance. 

 

This same idea as “your right eye” is represented by “your right hand” (v. 30). 

• The “right hand” is usually the stronger of the two, representing someone’s strength.

 

• God’s “right arm” is a regular picture, God’s strength.

 

• Christ is at God’s right hand as apex strength.

 

You have probably heard stories of people who hike, or rock climb alone only slip into a crevasse with their arm wedged in so tight that the only means for survival from starvation, hypothermia, or being eaten was to synch off your limb with a tourniquet twisting off the blood supply and to gnaw off the arm with a pocketknife. 

This graphically illustrates the extraordinary measures someone is willing to take when brought the decision of living or dying!  The point of life or death. 

 

 Hell is what brings us to this decision point. 

• Your “right eye” or “whole body…thrown into hell” (v. 29).
• “Cutting off and throwing away your right hand” or “your whole body go[ing] into hell?” (v. 30).

 To make this practical, zero in on the phrase, “causes you to sin” repeated in verses 29-30. 

• This is Jesus’ way of connecting someone’s sin from the heart to action.
  • Stating our eye or hand “causes” someone’s “sin” is neither undoing sin’s origin nor defining repentance as moral reform.

 

• Jesus is making heart repentance practical.

 

• When you repent (radically amputate) of your sin on the inside, this means automatic change occurs on the outside.

 

When you mortify or starve your sin on the inside, this transforms what you are willing to do on the outside.

^ESV  Romans 8:13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 

 ^ESV  Colossians 3:5-6 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. ⁶ On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 

^ESV  Galatians 5:24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

 

We carry out our sin with our physical body parts, so if you do not starve your lust on the inside then you will act on your lust on the outside. 

• When this cause/effect cycle remains unbroken – Jesus by divine right “throws” the “whole [physical] body into…hell” (cff. vv. 29-30).

 

“So what do we do?”  We turn to Scripture. 

 

In the Old Testament, Job said:

^ESV  Job 31:1 “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?  

 

Paul said in the New Testament:

 

^ESV  1 Corinthians 7:1 Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 

 

 Jesus’ violent language says to “tear out” or “pluck out”.

 

• You know you cannot look in the direction of someone.

 

• Starve this temptation on the inside and choose in your heart not to look at her.

 

• Render yourself incapacitated to see her.

 

• You have already nailed your eye on her up on the Cross of Jesus.

 

• You now choose who are what you are willing to imagine and what you are willing to do.

 

[Ask yourself] “Who you are willing to be around?” 

 

• What you are willing to suggest to someone.

 

• Cutting your hand off and “throwing it away” (v. 30; cf. “foot” Matt. 18:8) speaks to rerouting your life and relationships in view of the condition of your heart.

 

• Your fear of hell and your submission to Jesus’ Lordship will dictate what path you take.

 

^ESV  Matthew 18:8 And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire.

 

When I was in my mid-thirties, I was driving down a country road in Little Rock, Arkansas, and had a brush with death. 

 

• There were two mac trucks lined up to make a left-hand turn and I was approaching.

 

• The first truck had room and went, and I made the wrong assumption that the second truck would not go but it did.

 

• I remember locking my brakes but still sliding toward the side of a massive truck at nearly the same speed.

 

 

• My cellphone was live with my wife who was hearing this event while it was happening and I remember having one melancholy thought:

 

“Oh no…I am going to die…and this is how I am going to die?” 

 

• I believe that the Lord directed my vehicle to crash into the truck’s gas tank which crumpled at impact.

 

• I spun around and the airbag socked me in my sternum.

 

• I was in shock but immediately threw my arms up and thanked the Lord that I was still alive!

 

• Then found my cellphone to reassure Judy.

 

• She and my three kids at the time drove right to me.

 

• I remember Firetrucks being all around and my son Logan as a little boy unstrapping his car seat to get to me and give me a hug.

 

This was the ultimate reality. 

 

• Life was turning one way or the other.

 

• Forever was brought right up to my face.

 

• Jesus tells us secret sins are deadliest and costliest!

 

• “Lustful intent” is deadly.

 

• Not death by stoning or car wreck but far worse.

 

• Not even “death” by divorce.

 

• This “death” is your whole body, in hell, forever.

 

 

 

Take-Home Points:

•  Jesus equated lust with adultery means:

•  Everyone is guilty of this sin 

^ESV  Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

• Everyone has hope 

^ESV  1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.   

•  Simplify your solution for lust down to being willing to submit to Jesus as Lord

•  Yield your mind and thoughts to him

•  Yield your choices of where you will go and who you will befriend to him 

•  Fear hell as an unbeliever; rejoice because you have fled hell as a believer 

•   Consider what you gain by being pure

•  Your spouse and children will sense your purity

•  Your friends will feel safe around you

•  Your co-workers will trust your integrity

•  Your ministries will open-up before you